


Column B

by marginaliana



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: First Time, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 06:22:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13288878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/pseuds/marginaliana
Summary: It was a fairly common thing, actually. That moment when the danger has just passed but the adrenaline hasn't quite worn off. When you've saved someone, or been saved, or just jointly managed to not die.





	Column B

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fredbassett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/gifts).



It was a fairly common thing, actually. That moment when the danger has just passed but the adrenaline hasn't quite worn off. When you've saved someone, or been saved, or just jointly managed to not die. 

There was a tendency towards… well, 'strong emotion' was how the official documentation referred to it, but in truth it could run the gamut from 'effusive thanks' to 'stealing the police report out of your hands and drafting a formal letter of commendation on the back of it' to 'confessions of hidden love' to 'here's my number for your records, wink wink' to 'let's fuck right here at the crime scene.'

It'd happened to me a few times – mostly of the 'here's my number' variety but once, memorably, of the 'let's fuck' variety. I'd never taken anyone up on it, because a) I was always pretty busy in the moment, and b) it can be a quick career suicide if not handled just right, and c) none of the offers had ever been anything I actually wanted. But most of the time I'd at least seen it coming.

This was not one of those times.

I hadn't even seen the whole _incident_ coming. To be fair, neither had Nightingale, but this wasn't really a part of London that he'd spent much time in. It was the kind of place that he probably was mentally describing as 'seedy,' although I preferred to think of it as 'dodgy as fuck.' Still, the Folly had made London a hell of a lot safer these days, what with our improved relations with the rivers and me almost reaching the end of my apprenticeship and our collection of increasingly competent younger apprentices. So maybe we both could be forgiven for not realizing something was out of place before the side of the alley caved in and the slime monster appeared.

Nightingale was looking the other way, of course, examining the building that we had technically been called to investigate. I happened to be looking at the brick side where the slime monster appeared, which I would like to say was because I was following some sort of established procedure to make sure all areas of potential observation were being covered, but which in actuality was because looking at the back of a wood-clad building in an alleyway was deeply boring, and I figured that there wasn't really a need for _two_ of us to be doing it. At least my side had enough graffiti on it to be interesting.

The slime monster, when it appeared, was even more interesting. It wasn't something I'd seen before, either documented or in person, but it didn't give me any time to stare, just thundered in our direction, clawing up bricks and paving stones with both hands. I cast _impello_ ; the slime monster slid backwards, and I felt a momentary triumph that was immediately squashed as another three of them came lumbering out of the hole. 

One of them spat slime, an enormous glob that hit us both with considerable force; I could feel Nightingale go down beside me, but I managed to get one hand back and _impello_ against the ground to hold myself up. (It was a move that I'd practiced a lot because it made me look a bit like Neo in the Matrix films, and who wouldn't want that?) Then I scrambled for a brilliant idea, or even a somewhat sensible idea, and what came out of my subconscious was an old dehydrating spell that I'd been fiddling with a few weeks ago. I hit them with it all in one broad swath. All four stuttered to a halt, wrinkled up like prunes, and fell over.

I turned, still breathing hard, and offered Nightingale a hand up. He took it and came to his feet, covered in slime and more than a little disheveled. "Well done," he said, offering me a grateful smile – and suddenly it was all there in his eyes, relief and pride and… something else. 

"Oh," I said.

His face shuttered. "Let it alone, please, Peter." he said, releasing my hand and stepping briskly backwards.

What else could I say but 'Yeah, sure, of course'?

\-----

He avoided me for a few days after that, which maybe I ought to have been insulted by. But instead it was a relief, because it meant that I didn't have to be always on the lookout for him, didn't have to be careful of my expression every minute for fear that he'd know I was thinking about him.

Because I was. Thinking about him. 

I'd thought about it before – there was that whole thing where I thought he was trying to pick me up, when we first met – and I hadn't been his apprentice very long before I concluded that he was very attractive indeed. But I was the apprentice and he was the teacher, and it seemed spectacularly ill-advised, even by my standards, to try and start something. It seemed obvious that I would have had to choose between that and magic. And when it came down to it, I'd chosen magic. It hadn't even been a hard choice, then.

But maybe part of why it had been so easy was because, that first moment aside, I had believed him so completely uninterested. I had seen exasperation in his face when he looked at me, and curiosity and amusement and even pride, at times, but I had never seen _that_ look, that particular combination of emotion which meant _I want_. 

In the alley, though… 

If it had been someone else, I might have mistaken it for merely 'strong emotion,' merely gratitude, merely the usual adrenaline. But this was Nightingale, who didn't do 'merely' anything. 

And now that I knew that he wanted me, my own interest was coming back in full force. The question was, was I going to rock the boat?

This time it wasn't anything like an easy choice. We had years of history between us now, teacher and apprentice at first, and now, as the end of that was approaching, a real friendship. I didn't want to lose that, if I tried for something more and then it turned out that I'd got it all wrong.

I had almost decided to let it be, permanently, when I stumbled across him in a quiet moment. I couldn't sleep – still turning the whole situation over in my head, trying not to think too hard about what it would be like to have all his attention, that focus which almost burned in intensity. 

Eventually I gave up and went downstairs instead; I had pulled on a dressing gown over my pajamas but my feet were bare and the floor was smooth and cool beneath them.

I was headed for the library – late at night was sometimes the ideal time for translating Greek, as if exhaustion unlocked that particular part of my brain – but as I came to the bottom of the stairs I noticed a light on in the smoking room, and my feet took me there instead.

I stopped in the doorway. There was a fire in the grate, burned down almost to embers; it provided just enough light for me to see Nightingale, slumped at one end of a leather sofa, staring off into the shadows. There was a glass of something on the table in front of him, only half-full.

He looked up at the sound of my footsteps; from this angle his face was in shadow. I hesitated, but he didn't say anything and he didn't move to get up, which I took as implicit permission to come in. I reached for one of the glass tumblers and poured myself a sliver of whatever he was drinking.

"Can't sleep?" he said at last, looking away.

"Mmm. Yeah."

I sat down, not on the sofa but in the nearby chair. I thought I saw his shoulders relax just a fraction. Which made me feel like a shit for what I was about to do, but suddenly I knew that I _was_ going to do it. Because… 

Because I wanted to know what it could be like between us. Because he was the most important person in my life. Because he had looked at me a week ago with something wild in his eyes, and I desperately wanted to see it again.

I took a sip, more for the psychological effect than the physical (it was brandy, it turned out) and then said, "Can I ask you something?"

Nightingale's shoulders went rigid again. "Peter…"

"One question," I said. "That's all."

He breathed slowly, looking into the darkness. "All right."

"Is it—" I'd thought long and hard about this question, but in the moment it was a struggle to recall the wording. "Is it that you didn't think I'd be interested, or that it would be unethical, or… that I've completely misunderstood this whole thing?"

Even in the shadowy light I could see him close his eyes. He didn't say anything, and after a moment I offered, "A little of column A, a little of column B?"

He huffed out a laugh, but the amusement didn't last long. Eventually he said, "If it was… column A." It wasn't quite a question. He didn't look at me; he hadn't _been_ looking at me, but this was a more pointed sort of not looking.

"I—" I had to swallow hard. "I'd probably say it wasn't a well-founded assumption."

He didn't move. "And column B?"

This time the answer was easier. "I'd say I didn't agree, but that's me. I don't get to decide that for you."

His shoulders relaxed again, which was not at all what I expected, but I didn't have time to dwell on it before he said, "And column C—"

"Ah." My stomach twisted at that. "Well. Then that's it." I set the glass down on the corner of the table and stood up, turned to go. 

"Peter." I turned back and now he _was_ looking at me. "Come here."

"Sir…"

"Thomas," he said sharply. "It's Thomas right now."

_Column B_ , said a small voice in the back of my head, but I couldn't focus on it, couldn't focus on anything but the shape of his name in my mouth. "Thomas." 

It was considerably more intoxicating than the drink, being able to use his given name. I think we'd been heading there anyway, as colleagues, but that wasn't at all the same thing as being given permission here in the dark.

"Come here," he said, a little less sure of himself, and so I went promptly, four steps across the floor until I could sit down on the sofa beside him.

This close I could see the crows feet at the corners of his eyes, could hear the faint hitch to his breath, and before I could lose my nerve I leaned in and kissed him. It was a soft kiss at first, a little awkward, a little dry. Nightingale was holding back, I could tell, so I reached up to cup his face in my hand and pull him closer. He made a soft, choked noise in the back of his throat and then the kiss turned into something heated, open mouths and tongues and teeth. 

It was even better than I'd imagined, which was quite a feat given that this was me. His whole body was warm and he tasted like the sweet sharpness of brandy. He was breathing hard already, one hand clenched tight in the fabric of my pajama top. His other arm found its way around my waist, tugging me close; I turned with it, then gave in to the inevitable and swung my leg over so that I straddled his thigh. He groaned at that, a long low sound that shuddered through him. Both dressing gowns had ridden up and the only thing that separated us was the thin fabric of two pairs of pajamas. He was hard and so I was I, hard enough to ache. I wanted to get my hands on him, skin to skin, and I reached to tug up the hem of his top. 

He pulled away a little. "Peter. This isn't—" 

I didn't want to hear the end of that sentence, so I kissed him again, pushy, demanding. For a long moment he let me, then tore himself away at last to breathe against my shoulder. I cupped the back of his neck, but loosened the touch when he lifted his head. He reached up, ran the back of his hand down my cheek in a gesture that made something go strange and tight in my chest. "All I was going to say is that this isn't the place."

With a half inch of distance between us I could recognize that he wasn't entirely wrong about that. But I didn't want to stop. "So take me somewhere else," I said.

"Upstairs," he said. Between the two of us, we managed to get up without falling over. Nightingale banked the fire and put up the screen while I sorted out the rumpled mess of my dressing gown; he'd managed to have his fall neatly into place when he stood up, which was just typical.

I wanted to hold onto him as we went up the stairs, but I knew it wouldn't be discreet, and so we both kept a uniform four inches between us until he lead me into the bedroom. Then he pressed me back against the door and kissed me. None of his intensity had disappeared along the way, and for a moment I just gave myself up to it, let him kiss open my mouth and taste me. 

"Peter," he said at last.

"Yes."

"I'd rather like—" he began, and then made a frustrated noise. 

"Mmm?"

"I haven't acquired the equipment for this."

It took a moment for that to sink in, and then I laughed. "The great Thomas Nightingale isn't prepared for every eventuality?"

"I hadn't dared prepare for this one," he said frankly, and I couldn't laugh in the face of that, so I kissed him again, softer now. 

"Just come to bed, then."

It was a pleasure to undress him, slipping loose the knotted belt of his dressing gown and unfastening each button of his pajamas. Underneath he was wiry strong and, in the yellow light of the bedside lamp, as gorgeous as anything I'd ever seen. I couldn't stop running my hands over his skin, feeling the way he shivered under the touch.

Eventually he turned the tables and then we tumbled into the bed together, kissing desperately. Neither of us was much inclined to hold back, not now, and so we just rutted against each other, Nightingale on top with his hand clenched hard on my hip and my arms wrapped around his shoulders. The air between us was hot and humid, slick from sweat and the wetness of his cock and mine. I wanted to get my hand on him, or my mouth, but things were moving too fast. We were both too desperate for it; when I turned my head to bite at his neck he shuddered, hard, his cock rubbing jaggedly against mine and the hollow of my hip. "Peter," he said, the word no more than a moan.

"Thomas," I said, and that made him shudder even harder. I could see that look again in his face, the look that said _I want_. Whatever it was, I wanted to give it to him. I scraped my teeth over skin. "What do you—"

"I can't wait," said Nightingale. He was panting. "Not now. Next time I want to taste you, take my time."

The mental image of him with his head bent between my legs was a spellbinding one. "God, yes," I said. I curled my fingers into his hair, mussing it up and scraping fingernails over his scalp. "Then what?"

"I'll want you inside me," he said with a groan; I could feel the way his face flushed.

"Fantastic idea," I said, gasping. "Best you've had yet. Don't know how you're going to top that."

He chuckled. "I'm sure I'll— _ah_ — think of something." He tipped his head down to catch my mouth with his, sloppy, then kissed along my jaw and bit down on my earlobe. "And I'll be expecting some of your own characteristic creativity as well."

I pulled one arm from around his neck and reached down to grab at his arse. "If you can use a word like 'characteristic,'" I said, breathing it against his cheek, "then I really need to up my game." I tugged him closer, sharply, and he moaned long and low.

" _Fuck_."

The profanity was obscene in his mouth and it made me go hot all over. "Thomas." I dug in my fingers, and he lifted his head just far enough for our eyes to meet.

"Oh, Peter," he said helplessly, and shoved himself down against me and came in a slow shudder, slick heat spreading over my cock and my stomach and hips. His face was raw and open and so fucking beautiful that it made me ache.

I let myself watch without trying to pretend I was doing anything but, because if he didn't know that I wanted to watch him come, after all of this, then I really was failing to communicate in a major way. And just seeing him was enough to bring me to the edge, was enough to let me roll my hips up into the sticky space between us and catch my cock against his thigh and come with a desperate shout.

We clung to each other without speaking for a long time, breathing hard and kissing softly and breaking off to breathe again. Eventually my heartbeat slowed and so did his, and then he pressed his face into my neck. 

"So," I said. "I'm guessing you want me to teach you that badass backwards _impello_ move."

Nightingale snorted. "Perhaps," he said, kissing my jaw. "Although it might be more efficient to divide our strengths rather than duplicate them. I can focus on depth of knowledge, and you can focus on…"

"Mmm?"

"Being 'bad ass,' as you say."

I laughed. "I don't know," I said. "I think you've got a fair bit of skill in being badass already."

He nipped at my earlobe. "One has to accumulate _something_ over the years."

"Other than an encyclopedic memory for British magic and a passion for rugby."

"Other than that, yes," Nightingale said dryly. There was a moment of silence, and then he added, softly, "Having complementary talents can make for good teamwork."

I realized that he was testing the waters a little. "I approve of teamwork," I said, reaching up to run my fingers through his hair again. "If, you know. You think your team member is ready."

"My team member is bad ass," he said solemnly, and it startled such a laugh out of me that we set the whole bed to shaking.


End file.
